Quote Originally Posted by Ronduwil View Post
It's pretty amusing to see you say that because WoW casuals are currently flocking to this game in droves because WoW holds nothing whatsoever for them anymore. You know how casuals can grind tomestones in this game to purchase endgame gear? They can't do that in WoW anymore.
WoW caters to a hardcore playerbase and FFXIV to a more casual one, it's true, but I feel like when people say this they aren't...looking at it in quite the right way. They're usually saying it in a scornful way.

To me a casual friendly game has nothing to do with how easy its endgame is, it's how much of that endgame exists to do casually or just for fun vs gearing up for the hard content. WoW is hardcore because not many of its systems are "just for fun" anymore.

WoW's endgame revolves almost entirely around mythic dungeons and raiding, both of which have actually become esports. Aside from pet battling, every activity in WoW is about power progression and getting the player to engage in these more hardcore activities. Pet battling has not received much attention. Archaeology was abandoned entirely. The vanilla version of the games ("Classic" now) is actually more casual friendly. The leveling, questing and gearing parts of the game take more patience and are a huge part of the experience. Raiding in classic is very easy to the point that one raid was actually cleared by a group wearing no gear.

Final Fantasy XIV is more friendly to casuals because, like Classic, it has more casual content. Classic had the entire leveling experience, FFXIV has that and things like Palace of the Dead, treasure tomes, Bozja etc that don't make you feel pressured into doing Savage/Ultimate.